Colonel Tayloe’s occupancy of the Octagon embraced the administrations of four Presidents—Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams—and ceased in 1828, just as the picturesque figure of “Old Hickory” rose above the Presidential horizon. In 1814, after the burning of the White House by the British, the hospitality of the Octagon was tendered to the homeless President and his bewitching “Dolly,” and for six or eight months it was transformed into “the President’s house,” Colonel and Mrs. Tayloe retiring to their country seat for the nonce. In the circular room over the round vestibule, Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent, February, 1815, which closed our second war with Great Britain. The table at which the treaty was signed is still in the possession of the Tayloe family. The fact that Madison is esteemed one of our most intellectual and scholarly Presidents, that his state papers exhibit not only statecraft, but literary construction of a high order, and that a distinguished Southern Senator in a recent speech in Congress named him “more than any other man the author of the American Constitution,” gives peculiar piquancy to the following story, which is vouched for by Mr. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe: When a member of Congress in Philadelphia, Mr. Madison boarded in the house of Mrs. Payne, the mother of “Dolly,” at that time the beautiful Widow Todd. Mr. Madison, attracted by the personal charms of the fascinating young widow, sent her a book to read and requested her opinion of it—presumably with a view to sounding her mental depth. Whereupon, Mrs. Todd, who, Mr. Tayloe says, was always more remarkable for beauty, tact and manner than for depth of intellect, asked Colonel Burr, who boarded there, also, to write her reply to Mr. Madison, which he accordingly did. Shortly afterward, Madison offered himself to the handsome and intellectual widow, and was accepted. This story tallies with the statement from other sources that Burr made the match between Madison and the sprightly Dolly, but if our accomplished fourth President really was ensnared by the schoolgirl ruse, he certainly had no occasion to complain of his matrimonial bargain. For in the judgment of her contemporaries and of all succeeding generations, no lady has ever done the honors of the White House more gracefully and acceptably to all parties than the gracious and lovely Dolly Madison. Her brilliant levees and various functions at the Octagon during her brief sojourn there are among the richest traditions of early official life in the Federal city.